


dear winter, i hope you like your name

by cyanica



Series: maybe i just took too much cough medicine [whumptober 2020] [18]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Angst, Bucky Barnes Has Issues, Bucky Barnes Has PTSD, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Captain America: The First Avenger, Depression, Gore, Hurt Bucky Barnes, Hurt No Comfort, M/M, Medical Experimentation, Mental Breakdown, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Non-Consensual Drug Use, POV Second Person, Past Torture, Post-Battle of Azzano (Marvel), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Trauma, Self-Harm, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Vomiting, Whump, Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-02
Updated: 2021-01-02
Packaged: 2021-03-12 03:02:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28503438
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyanica/pseuds/cyanica
Summary: The gun in his hand, the metal kissing against the rose blush of his lips is the feeling of a thousand suns’ warmth. Or at least, it should be, this close to his beautiful, disintegrating brain filled with syrupy blue medicine that gives him the power to live forever.Or Bucky has a theory that he is eternal, and wants to prove himself wrong.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Series: maybe i just took too much cough medicine [whumptober 2020] [18]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1947775
Comments: 1
Kudos: 17
Collections: Stucky Bingo 2020, Whumptober 2020





	dear winter, i hope you like your name

**Author's Note:**

> read tags for tws. the medical experimentation and non-consensual drug use is implied/referenced, but still can be triggering. 
> 
> whumptober prompt day 31: experiment, left for dead
> 
> stucky bingo prompt: ptsd
> 
> title from 'dear winter' - ajr. the song doesn't have anything to do with the themes of this fic, but i liked that specific lyric for the title.

Steve looks around the tent like he is trying to find any other possibility for you to be holding a knife to your chest, any other reason for there to be a bottle of drain cleaner half empty on the desk in the same place where you keep your flask. The whole tent reeks of acid – you’re stripped down to your singlet and trousers, painted in the liquid toxicity, face red and burning and breathing in a way you shouldn’t be – and Steve is looking at you as if he can’t.

Steve looks at you like he is going to be sick – sick in the way he used to look when his fever rose and rose until he was incapable of speaking, of doing absolutely anything but force oxygen between aching lungs and airways that crumbled in on themselves as they filled with fluid and blood. He’s maybe even the type of sick he still gets sometimes when his head is too empty, and his body goes numb as if covered in ice and snow, and the oblivia eventually reaches into his golden heart like a poison. 

He never tells you these things anymore, but the weight of Steve’s mind sometimes bleeds into the features of his unfamiliarly familiar face, the shaking gentleness of his scarred hands, the 3AM song of your name from the gravity of his tongue when you are screaming at the moonlight, seeing phantom relics of needles and knives and tubes and blue liquid made of tree sap and blood, through the darkness that smothers the January skies. 

The serum didn’t fix everything, you suppose.

_...Buc_ – _? What the fu…_ – _oing?_

Steve’s voice is strange – his face is strange, his hands, his body. You know it is him, you do, _you really, really do_ – but even so, you still want to shrivel yourself into the corner of the tent and count numbers on your fingers until you reach infinity; you want to tear the flesh from the bones of your body until dawn rises above the mountains; you want to scream the numbers _three-two-five-five-seven-zero-three_ because you don’t think they exist any more – they died on a cold metal table, ice on rock. 

_Get the fuck away from me._

The serum certainly didn’t fix you.

Maybe it is you who is the stranger.

Maybe you are the one who's sick. 

There’s a knife to your chest, half a bottle of drain cleaner within your stomach and a rifle that sits to your left that is slowly whispering harmonic whispers of rapture and mockery in the same breath, and yet, the lively heart beating inside your chest seems to defy it all. 

_Thump, thump, thump._

_– ...‘Ife down! – lease, Buc – can you give m –_

It keeps playing, over and over again like a record on a loop that you and Steve had danced to the night before you left – and it was impossible to stop. Not the needles or their drugs, not the slashing of your skin with their blades, not the half-bottle of acid you choked on could silence the pounding rhythm inside your chest. It played on endinglessly, eternally like a damned infinite siren, and it isn’t like you wanted to die, but you are terrified of what should happen if you _don’t_.

_I said get the fuck away from me._

You are sick, probably very sick in all the ways most people never would be, _couldn't_ be – but you’re also alive – vividly, eternally alive –, and you think, after Azzano, after Austria, that’s entirely the problem. Living is a disease all the same, and you are going to live for a very, very long time. 

The drain cleaner is sugar syrup and sweet honey. The combat knife is the starry reflection of the ever changing sky and the glint of daybreak in the morning. The gun is a children’s toy loaded with a peddle. 

_You'r…_ – _goin to ki_ – _…yourself!_

You can do no harm.

The knife is twisting within your skin, cutting as if it is paper because it is. You’re a doll made of newspaper and cotton, of buttons and twine, and though you used to have skin, it is all rotten now. You’re porcelain. You’re perfect. 

_I should be dead. I should be_ dead.

Your voice, your hands are steady because they are not your own. They’re theirs. You know this now and you have since they pumped your bloodied, crimson organs with cystraline cyanic syrup and turned them acidic purple – made you _theirs_.

– _ucky…_

Steve is wrestling you for the knife now. It shouldn’t matter whether or not he succeeds because you can feel the forgien acid devouring the flesh and bone from inside your stomach like butterfly kisses. It does matter because you can feel your organs expelling the toxin and restitching the unblemished porcelain of your physical soul together and that’s not right.

As you speak, clear burning liquid that smells of your mother’s cleaning closet runs down your mouth, your neck. You choke on it, but you never stop breathing. 

You should count them. Each breath. 

You do.

_No. You're not listening. I can't die. The drugs, the posion, the fucking gun – it doesn't matter. They did something. They_ did _something to me._

_Oh, God. Okay, Buck. C – you ple... gi – me the knife, plea –_

Steve wins. He wins a lot now, lately. He has the knife and holds it so tightly that the middle of the blade presses into the palm of his hand and makes it bleed onto the floor. He re-adjusts his grip and heals.

You stare at the stanger and wonder if you should ask him if he is thirsty.

You reach for the rifle instead.

_You're not listening. All of it didn't work. I should be dead, but I’m not and they did something so I can't die. I – I – don’t understand... I don't think I'm human. I'm – I'm not_ me, _Steve. They_ did _something._

The clear liquid death staining upon the skin of your neck feels as if it is gone, evaporated into the January mountainous snow like snowflakes in the spring. The gun in your hand, metal kissing against the rose blush of your lips is the feeling of a thousand suns’ warmth upon this desolate Earth. 

Or at least, it should be, this close to your beautiful, disintegrating brain filled with syrupy blue medicine that gives you the power to live forever. 

_I kno… ey messed with y –, okay? ... Did awf – ucking shi – nd I am so, s ... – rry that I couldn – ... stop it….cky, but if you d ... this, you will actu – die. Jesus, y – onna kil… rself! Ple – just..._

_You're not listening. I can't die, Steve._

Your organs are all cleansed now. Nothing smells of bane. The air is crisp outside and has the aroma of an oncoming snowstorm. Maybe tomorrow or the day after.

_...ck, don’t –_

It’s okay, Steve. 

_Watch._

_N ..._ – !

_Oh_ , you think as he screams. _Oh_ , you think as your brain builds itself back together and you remember who you are, what you are.

You don’t try again until the snowstorm covers the skies and everything is blackened with pale white light and frostbitten water suffocating the earth. 

_Oh_ , you think as Steve screams for the second time. _Oh_ , you think as you fall.

You fall faster than the snowflakes do when they rain down upon the earth in all their crystalised angelic glory, because of course you do. You are an undead weight of porcelain flesh and amber bone marrow and acidic drain cleaner, that doesn’t deserve to be among the wreckage of winter snow and broken railway when the freight train comes tumbling down along with you. 

Screams from a bloodied, mangled throat become that of manic hysteria – complete insanity – as your undead corpse of all things inhuman hits the burning ice, shattering the bones of your vertebrae, painting the clean ice with gallons and gallons of bleeding crimson unlife, and ripping the entire flesh and bone from your arm. 

_Ha._

You laugh in some deranged, knowing way – a bubbling crackle of broken teeth and bloody vomit from the back of your throat – as you feel your own corpse rebuild itself back together like a needle and thread, like brain matter and memory.

You can do no harm.

You will come to know that it is never you who will have the privilege to hurt yourself. You will not be thankful.

Because – 

The drain cleaner is sugar syrup and sweet honey. The combat knife is the starry reflection of the ever changing sky and the glint of daybreak in the morning. The gun is a children’s toy loaded with a peddle. 

The fall is freedom. The ice is sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> title: dear winter, i hope you like your name  
> creator(s): cyanica  
> card number: 075  
> link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28503438  
> square filled: b4 – ptsd  
> rating: mature  
> archive warnings: chose not to use archive warnings  
> major tags: suicide attempt, angst, past torture, mental breakdown, hurt/no comfort  
> summary: bucky has a theory that he is eternal, and wants to prove himself wrong.  
> word count: 1452


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